Never Again / Don't Look Up

I find it astonishing that I seem unable to find any news outlet outside of Israel reporting some sense of truth with regards to the headlines this week of “Hamas says Yes to agreement, IDF enters Rafah”.

For those who care to know a bit of the detail, I propose you listen to the podcast Call Me Back on Spotify where journalist Nadav Eyal explains. Two weeks ago, Israel, through mediators, gave what was determined by the US to be a most generous offer as a deal, thus finally putting Hamas under some pressure.

The Egyptian, American-backed, Israeli offer to Hamas involved:

Israel:

1. to release c.1000 prisoners
2. to surrender its posts within the Gaza Strip completely
3. to evacuate almost all IDF soldiers from Gaza including withdrawal from the corridor it has taken in the centre, thus allowing the displaced persons from the centre and north to return
4. all peoples to return without any screening at checkpoints for Hamas combatants

Hamas:

1. to return 33 hostages alive.

This was essentially the Israeli offer.

What happened?

• Hamas delayed a response saying they could not reach Sinwar, he’s underneath the ground.
• Hamas then put news out saying they might say yes to the offer.
• Israel prepare for limited operation in East Rafah taking hold of the border crossing within Gaza by the Egyptian border.
• Hamas announce to the world triumphantly they’ve said yes (deceitful and duplicitous you will see) - and as our media outlets have done many times (Reuters, BBC, etc), they report this “Yes” around the world.
• Meanwhile, the Israelis are waiting for an answer. Is it in fact a yes?
• The Hamas answer was published. Rather than a Yes, it was pages of a sophisticated counter offer.

Hamas Counter offer (one example)

• Their new offer included they will not acknowledge whether the 33 hostages to be returned are alive. They can/will not say how many are dead, they can return bodies.
• The hostages will come back 3 per week (alive or as a body) over 5 weeks (a 40 day period in total).
• After this, there will be a 2nd phase whereby Israel will first agree to the end of the war publicly. If this is announced and there is a complete withdrawal with their prisoners released (many serving life terms for murder), the next 15 hostages (dead or alive) will be given back, 3 per week (over a 42 day period).
• Then at the end of this 2nd phase, Israel will get the final 3 (alive or as a body).
• For each female hostage (dead or as a body), Israel will release 50 prisoners of Hamas’ choosing and they will have a right to return to the West Bank. Their requirements for non-female hostages, less generous.
• Israel will have no veto over which prisoners or veto over them returning to the West Bank.
• As said, many prisoners are serving life sentences for murder (including murder of Palestinians).

Essentially, Hamas are aiming for fellow comrades to operate from the West Bank, and repeat another October 7th when the time is right (as they have said publicly since October 7th they vow to do).

I find it astonishing that little old me is having to pass on the message but our Western news outlets don’t seem interested in this detail.

I have tried to refrain from posting for many months since Hamas intentionally killed 1200 civilians (of all ethnicities but mostly and because they are Jewish), in Israel, back on October 7th. They are still holding over 100 hostages underground, for now more than 7 months - hopefully most are still alive. I have tried to refrain because what difference do words make on social media or any other platform. I'm not sure the answer to that question but as a British Jewish person, I do think its important for people who are not Jewish, as well as Jewish people, to hear another point of view. Silence led Jews to gas chambers a little over 80 years ago.

This may be a bit of a crude analogy but the current situation around the world reminds me of the Netflix satire “Don’t Look Up” where an entire global movement convinced themselves that it was safer not to look up than acknowledge the fact that a meteor was hurtling its way directly towards planet Earth. If enough people didn’t look up, it was as if it was not happening. This to me is the “pro-Hamas / from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” movement. If enough people say it and believe it, then the world will be a better place because it represents good over evil.

This would be great, if it was true, but I don't believe it is. And I like to believe, there is still truth in this world.

We have a current day movement rewriting history, spouting fake facts, supporting a misguided cause. This cause, if it achieved its end goal would force the people supporting this cause to convert to Islam, submit to Sharia law or else, at best be controlled by some Iranian-backed proxy, at worst, tortured to death. We now find the slogan “Free Palestine” dominating Western society, on stickers on lamp-posts and lap-tops, on graffiti in Shoreditch and similar trendy areas of large cities and spouted from the mouths of students at rallies with little to no idea of their history or facts or what they are protesting for or against, as well as celebrities and politicians posting it, thinking they are supporting a worthy cause. Ask any Israeli-Arab if they would prefer to live in Israel or live in an Arab state run by the PLO or Hamas under any circumstances, and you’ll get your answer pretty quickly. (The answer would be Israel in case that is not obvious).

The world is walking somewhat blindly towards madness, as it did in Nazi Germany, not caring for truth, nor historic facts. The world has found its cool mantra, it might happen to mean the death of Jews and its sovereign state, but it doesn’t matter, it rhymes, its short and sweet and it makes you look popular and feel good.

Upon me saying this, it is normally time for a Western media outlet to roll out a Jew they can find that wants a peaceful world at all costs and therefore embarrassed by Israel and ready to condemn the Jewish state publicly. They get the thumbs up they were seeking. Or the media outlet rolls out a family member of one of the hostages as if to blame Israel for the fact that hostages have been taken and we hear them say they just want a deal, we don’t trust the government, take the deal. Many in Israel do not trust their government. Many people in many countries do no trust their elected government. If you or I ever had a loved one taken, knowing at best they had been sitting locked up underground in Gaza for over 7 months, I think we would of course want them back, at almost any cost. But this is the narrative of our Western media rather than instead, nightly condemnation of what Hamas has done and is doing to their own people as well as Israelis.

Gaza was left to the Palestinians, literally - the Jews left it to them to get on with building whatever they wanted. No blockade, nothing. The Jews physically left. Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister at the time called it “an experiment”. Under pressure from all the countries criticizing Israel today, Israel did what they asked and “gave the land back”. An experiment to see what Arabs who by now called themselves Palestinians would do with a coastline of the Mediterranean Sea. I realise even as I write this, what I am saying sounds inflammatory but it is factually correct. The population of Gaza back then was a little over half what it is today, around 1.2 million. And guess what happened? Rockets happened. Tens, then hundreds, then eventually thousands of rockets fired into Israel from Gaza.

Israel should be cool with that right. Wrong. Why should they be cool with rockets landing on their land. Oh and also, the Gazan population under the PLO had an election and a civil war between Fatah (armed wing of PLO) and Hamas, until Hamas won having killed their fellow Arabs and then they started digging tunnels to infiltrate Israel as well as continued firing of rockets into Israel.

You may not like to believe it but Gaza’s population has been radicalized as Jew-haters since Ariel Sharon forcibly withdrew all Israeli Jews from Gaza in 2005. One could argue the population are Israel haters and it’s justified, but they are taught in UNRWA schools to want to stab a Jew if they see one. You can find video interviews on YouTube of children explaining this. On October 7th, one Gazan man who crossed into Israel called home to his parents exclaiming with pride that he’d killed 10 Jews. Imagine people in our country driving dead bodies tied to the back of cars, dragging them along until their faces are ripped off. And all the while, women cheering at the sides of the road. That happened on October 7th 2023 in Gaza. I don’t think that would happen in London. At least not yet. How about imagining 3,000 men crossing a border into another country - shooting, beheading, raping and taking hostages. Now understand that there are less than 1 million men over the age of 18 in Gaza which means, generously, 0.3% of the male population acted in barbaric ways on October 7th. Apply that % to any other country in the world and see what number you get to. That’s what Israel is having to deal with as well as global condemnation for, essentially, trying to exist.

I knew on October 7th that the world would soon turn against Israel. As a Jewish person, I have a heightened sensitivity to the disproportionate criticism levelled against Israel. In my adult life, I have seen it before. I am however increasingly shocked at the response since and question where it is safe to be Jewish in the world right now. It takes up my thoughts on an almost daily basis I am sad to say. I am sure it is the same for many other Jewish people you may know. We might look and sound fine but we do not feel ok in this world right now.

You may think the response is about Israel, about the way a country is acting but there are so many disproportionate outrages at Israel, a country the size of Wales, with a population equal to London, that this is just a convoluted, or in some cases, not so convoluted form of antisemitism. The UN has issued more resolutions against Israel than any other bad actors (Syria, Iran, Qatar, etc) in the world combined.

Antisemitism is never rational. It’s a complex racism against Jews that is justified for different reasons but ultimately ends up with criticism levelled at the Jews for being too anything - too weak, too strong, too rich, too poor, too white, too brash, too secretive, too Jewish, too anything. It’s always hard to see it until it goes too far.

Too far was the Nazis where they used deceit and fear to transfer millions of Jews to showers where they were gassed to their deaths.

Never again.

Understand those words. They may seem simplistic, defiant, almost immature. But they mean a lot to Jews who have ancestors (that's most of us), that managed to survive the Nazis just 80 years ago. Never again means never again will Jews rely on others for defence. For wanting to just get on with life whilst being openly Jewish.

If you want to get some sense of the evil that man is capable of, I suggest reading The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian journalist. I am reading it at the moment. I thought I knew of all the atrocities the Nazis had perpetrated. I know a lot about the Holocaust. I did not. It is shocking. And it should be shocking because what we saw from the Nazis and what we see from Hamas goes against the values, freedom and privilege that we enjoy in the West and quite understandably, after years of it, we take it completely for granted. (I will say, so far Hamas do not compare to the evil of the Nazis but that is only because Israel has more power than Hamas at present. If Hamas had all the power, they have proven, they would act just as the Nazis did, of that there should be no doubt).

The current anti-semitism we are seeing under the cloak of anti-Israel (or anti-Zionism - Zionism it feels has essentially been turned into a dirty word - it just means Jews wanting to return to their ancestral homeland, nothing more, nothing less) - the current anti-semitism leans on Israel as a white-colonialist, apartheid, genocidal state and in my opinion, stems from Islamic (and Western liberal) anger at Jews having created a relatively successful, imperfect but relatively democratic, advanced nation from a desert land despite the wars, suicide bombers, and other jihadi intentions to end the country. Had Arabs in 1948 or at any stage since, stopped trying to kill Israeli Jews and focused their efforts on establishing peace and economic prosperity, I think things could be quite different by now. To be fair and more accurate, ultimately, Iran and other bad actors are funding attempts at Israel’s annihilation and the Arab civilian (today known as Palestinian) population are treated by surrounding Muslim countries as pawns without genuine control, support or helpful leadership towards a positive future by their own leaders.

I would add, imagine how successful Israel might have been had it not had to waste so much time defending itself from attacks. Or perhaps that has contributed to a mindset that has helped it advance itself quicker as a nation. I’m not sure. Israel is far from perfect, what country is, but it’s done pretty well in less than 80 years. What its given in tech and innovation is an outlier amongst nations, that is quite phenomenal. And yet it is held to a higher standard of expectation than all other countries, certainly by our Western media.

10th May 2024

Half of Israel’s population is non-white, homosexuality is celebrated in Tel Aviv, the % of Jews in Arab countries is almost nil when it use to be hundreds of thousands, Gaza’s population has quadrupled, Israel’s civilian to combatant numbers ratio of dead in Gaza are considered lower than any previous war in an urban setting (despite what you might read) and the Jewish people who experienced a genuine “genocide” have had that word weaponised against them and still, Israel is being cast as an almost criminal state by most networks with Netanyahu the evil master. Whether you like him or dislike him, agree or disagree with him, he is in fact a prime minister chosen to lead a sovereign nation after a free and fair democratic election under a proportional representation voting system.

If you’ve reached this point, thank you for reading, I appreciate your time.

I will end by saying that unfortunately there are tunnels the size of double decker buses from Egypt into Gaza. These tunnels have been used for years to bring many of the rockets and infrastructure that has enabled 500km of tunnels to be built and thousands of rockets to be launched into Israel on an almost weekly basis. No country in its right mind should have to tolerate that. With regards to the tunnels, let’s remember these tunnels have not at any point been offered by Hamas as bomb shelters to the civilian population of Gaza. Instead, they are left above ground and currently about 4 Hamas battalions are estimated to be sitting under Rafah, possibly with Yahya Sinwar, possibly with hostages that are still alive, possibly he’s no longer there, possibly they’re dead. It’s sad and somewhat ironic that the world is expecting Israel to create a safe place for the Gazan population in Rafah rather than expecting the people that govern and control Gaza to help their own population. But this is Hamas’ strategy. Israel is forced to fight a group that control their land and don’t care for their own civilian population as their strategy. Either way, it’s war and it’s tragic but Israel cannot allow those tunnels and those battalions to exist so it has to go into Rafah and do what it needs to do to stop Hamas controlling the land and it’s people. Or at least do the best it can to stop it.

As I said above, “never again” means never again will Jews rely on others for defence. With or without America’s support, Israel will fight to survive because it has no alternative for its people. The world has quite clearly shown how it feels towards this little Jewish state.

Have a nice weekend.